There are many smart phones and equivalent terminals on the market that are capable of handling a great deal of data. In many cases, this data is critical for the user and/or for the company that the user is working for. The size of these data streams will inevitably increase, and many new applications will be introduced for these terminals. Some of those new applications will handle data that includes secret material in formats such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Smart phones will be handling documents that are currently handled only by desktop and laptop devices. Currently, laptops are very well-protected against loss and theft, but for mobile terminals such as smart phones there is not yet any global solution that protects information stored in the mobile terminal in case the terminal is lost or stolen, while also guarding against unauthorized usage.
Methods are known for a network to lock a mobile terminal, using an international mobile station equipment identity (IMEI) or subscriber identity module (SIM). An example of present technology is Helle (U.S. Pat. No. 6,662,023) which guards against unauthorized usage and employs a short messaging system, but is incapable of addressing protection of data within the terminal. Most known methods use an operator-provided service, but that does not help to prevent unauthorized data access in the terminal.
Having a mobile terminal stolen or misplaced is in many ways similar to losing an automated teller machine (ATM) card, for example. Even though the ATM card is protected by a user password, it is still conceivable that a criminal who obtains the card might find a way to use it, perhaps after having spied on the user to obtain the password. Therefore, it is wise to request that the bank cancel the user password. Likewise, a password alone is not enough to protect a mobile terminal, because a thief might find a way to bypass, steal, or decipher the password. In some ways, a mobile terminal may be even more vulnerable than an ATM card, if the mobile terminal has valuable documents stored inside of it, whereas an ATM card is almost useless unless it is taken to an ATM machine in order to access a bank account. In this sense, losing the mobile terminal would be similar to losing a memory stick, CD-ROM, or multimedia card (MMC), in which considerable data may be stored.